My New Shower
by FlooJo
Summary: Jolex post 15x20. Jo is struggling after meeting her birth mother, and Alex is worried.


Jo's eyes were closed as she stood in the shower, feeling the water pelting down her back. She'd thought that maybe a shower would make her feel better, more energised perhaps, but she just felt the same. Jo sat down.

When she was a child, sitting down in the shower had been the best place to be. The majority of her foster homes had been extremely crappy. Either the foster family had been overly attentive and strict, never giving Jo space enough to breath, or they had been the exact opposite, cool and uncaring. However chaotic and loveless the homes had been, she had always found peace and warmth sat down in the shower. Even when she had been with Paul, and he had beat her or yelled at her or blamed her for something, she could take 20 minutes and forget it all, and drift off into a beautiful daydream, in the warmth and isolation of her shower.

But this time it wasn't working.

Maybe she had finally broken.

God, she felt so weak. Other people went through crap too, and she didn't see them having a breakdown over it. Alex had grown up with an abusive father and a psycho mother, had endured juvie, and a cancer wife and a shooting, and he was like, the strongest person she knew. Jo couldn't even list all the things Meredith Grey had survived, and still there she was, successfully bringing up 3 beautiful child geniuses and winning a freaking Catherine Fox award.

All it had taken to break Jo was, what…? Learning that she was unwanted? That was something she had already known her whole life. She felt stupid for letting this break her. Nothing had actually even happened to her. Jo had just been the collateral damage.

That's why she couldn't tell Alex. If Alex found out what a basket-case he had married, what an unwanted, unlovable, _weak_ idiot he had married, he would surely leave her in a heartbeat. And that, she knew, she would not survive.

Jo was so caught up in her thoughts, she didn't even hear Alex's calls through the door, didn't notice his banging, or when the door burst open and Alex saw her there, crying pathetically in a ball on the shower floor.

The shower turned off, and suddenly she was being wrapped up in a warm towel, and Alex's arms were around her.

Gently he lifted her up and led her out of the shower. He helped dry her, and put her pyjamas on, and then he took her hand and guided her towards their bed. They sat down on the side of the bed, and Jo finally looked at him.

She was taken aback by his expression. He looked exhausted and confused, but most of all, he looked worried.

"Jo, I can't keep doing this."

_Here it comes._

"All this sadness and shutting yourself away and crying in the shower. It-it's killing me to see you like this."

_He can't handle it. He shouldn't have to._

"I just wish you'd talk to me."

_He thinks I don't trust him. He's going to leave me._

"But I know I can't make you. Only you can do that. I just want you to know that- well that I'm not gonna go anywhere."

_…What?_

"Clearly, you're going through some crap. And if you don't want to talk to me about it, I guess I get it. I would rather you did talk to me, or to someone at least. But I get it."

_…He gets it._

"But I married you, Jo. In sickness and in health and all that crap. You got me, Jo. I swear to God. And unless you… I dunno, unless you suddenly become a raging racist or homophobe or something, I'm not gonna leave you. Not ever." Jo smiled weakly at his attempt to cheer her up. "All I ask is that you don't leave me too."

_He's not gonna leave me._

Alex lifted his hand and tucked a stray wet strand of Jo's hair behind her ear. Jo looked into his eyes and was overwhelmed by the love she saw there. It hit her like a tonne of bricks, and it was the first time since Pittsburgh that she had really felt anything.

"Maybe you're my new shower," said Jo, without thinking.

Alex looked at her like she'd gone mad, and something about that made her laugh.

She decided then that she would tell Alex about her birth mom. Not yet, she wasn't ready for that yet. But she knew that she could, and that made her feel so much better.

"I love you," said Jo, after he laughter subsided.

Alex still looked at her like she was insane, but his worry had decreased somewhat.

"I love you too."


End file.
